All parties involved with any software implementation play a role in both its success and failure. Therefore, they all have something to learn from an implementation failure, which can be as important as customers recuperating their financial investment or vendors clearing their name and image.
Mistakes and failures are a great opportunity for people to learn, but try to tell that to a chief financial officer or a chief executive officer who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more, on a software solution that falls short of meeting the needs of the company. An immediate reaction may be to reach for the phone and seek legal counsel to recoup some of costs incurred.
A close afterthought may be to recognize that the customer may have something to do with the implementation failure - and the problem, unless addressed, will persist during the next software selection and implementation with another vendor. So while lawyers are busy collecting facts for their lawsuit, decision makers should conduct their own investigation to ensure mistakes are not repeated.
